Excerpt: Hopeful Romantic

He laughed with disgust, though she couldn’t tell if it was an emotion he was aiming at her or at himself. Surely she knew exactly where she was, even if like the rest of the women he brought home, she may have been too drunk last night to recall it completely.

He stared at her incredulously, his tone insistent that she must be kidding if she thought he’d believe she was that confused. “C’mon.”

Now she laughed. “Well, Mr. Personality, it so happens that I have no clue who you are and last thing I knew I was in my living room. How I got here is as much a mystery to me as you.”

“Go.” He seemed to be searching unsuccessfully for a pair of pants. If he got caught with one more woman in his room…

Annabeth saw a pair crumpled on the floor beside the large screen television and she clucked her tongue in frustration before finally bending over, hooking her index finger around one of the belt loops and holding them out toward him. “Looking for these?”

“The party.” He snarled. “God. I.”

Annabeth was now completely and totally confused.

“Look, junior, I still don’t know who you are or at this point really who I am. So if you could help me out a little…”

“Clothes...” The young man hazily mumbled as he pulled a black shirt out of the closet to go with the black pants he was once again wearing. It appeared, as Annabeth peered beyond him into the space, that every piece of clothing he owned was black. To emphasize her conclusion he pulled a black leather jacket from the floor where he’d shed it the night before and slid into it.

“You.” He snarled. “Wasted.”

Annabeth tried very hard to concentrate. There really was something familiar about him, she just couldn’t put her finger on it…

“Mister Druid, sir,” There was a knock at the door and Druid flung himself forward, nearly falling flat on his face, to turn the lock. He knew that Rosetta rarely waited for or asked permission before she entered. If she waited for that, his room would never get cleaned. “I have your fresh linens…”

“Later.” Druid called through gritted teeth.

“But, Mister Druid, your father wants you downstairs for breakfast…”

“LATER!”

As she only half-listened to the exchange going on through the door, Annabeth’s mind began to spin faster and faster.

No, this isn’t possibly possible.

This didn’t have the slightest chance of even becoming the glimmer of the beginning of a possibility.

“Druid?” She stammered. She suddenly was able to see the room around her in its entirety. She’d seen it before- she’d described it before. Down to unfinished paintings laying strewn around the room, to the X Box and Nintendo Wii in the corner with games stacked clear to the ceiling, to the hair products and eyeliner pencils on the top of the dresser, she knew this room.

She’d created this room.

She started to laugh.

“Okay, this is cute. I must be having a nightmare.”

“Dream. “ Druid suggested arrogantly as he began to style his hair. After all, she’d spent the night with him and that could never in any way be considered a nightmare.

Annabeth quickly came to the understanding that if she recognized this room, if she had created this room then the chances were very, very good she’d created this little make-up wearing monster as well. She couldn’t help but scoff at his imagined prowess at the art of seduction; even though she had written them into him herself.

“Get real, little boy. I did no such thing as spend the night in your bed and if you think I’d want to, hell, you are even more delusional than the exaggerations I attributed to you.” She held her arms out and slowly rotated, indicating the room. ”I created you. If I wanted to conjure up a great romantic interest for myself to be enshrined in literary mediocrity I sure as hell wouldn’t have picked you.”

“What?” He narrowed his eyes. This one was truly bats. “Literary?”

“Never mind. So, what’s on the agenda this morning?”

“You. Leave.” Druid said, buckling his belt and shoving his feet into his untied Doc Martens. “Then…” He paused to apply gloss to his lips. He winked at her, just to try to rile her up again. “Breakfast.”

He sauntered, no; he clomped his way to the door in those untied, steel-toed combat boots and Annabeth groaned.

“This has ceased to be enjoyable. I don’t think anyone should ever get this close to one of their creations.” She flopped down onto the huge red velvet divan that was positioned opposite the bed. “I think I’m beginning to understand how Frankenstein felt. Benjamin, you won’t believe it when I tell you about this.”

Hey, she thought, I should tell him about this.

There was a laptop on the couch beside her, and she stretched her arm out as far as it would go and just caught the edge of it with her fingertips. She dragged it back toward her, groaning slightly as she hoisted it up over the arm of the furniture with an awkward yank.

Setting it onto her lap, she switched it on and waited for it to warm up.

She opened up a new browser window- or rather, she attempted to.

She saw that the wi-fi indicator was dark, and she swore softly.

First her computer at home, now even in her dreams she couldn’t get internet access?

“I have got to stop drinking decaf.” She declared. “Since I switched everything in the world has gone to Hell.”

She thought about trying to go back to sleep. Her body seemed to demand it, but her mind refused to cooperate.

It spun tighter and tighter and faster until she couldn’t stand the sound of her own voice in her ears.

“Forget this. This is my dream and I’ll be damned if I’m going to keep myself locked up in the creepiest room in the house.” She felt a shiver go through her but couldn’t have said where the draft was coming from that caused it.

“I want breakfast.”

It was only after she was halfway down the corridor that she realized that, dream or no, there may be a problem here with her plan to raid the Frost’s overstuffed kitchen pantries.

Aside from the fact that all anyone seemed to eat around here was caviar and foie gras-- which she could never eat or she’d gag thinking of Donald, Daisy, and heaven forbid, Daffy.

There had to be something else around here. There could be no possible way that Modesto didn’t get cravings for Ding Dongs and Fritos every once in awhile.

But the food whatever it was wasn’t really the issue: it was the fact that she couldn’t allow herself to be seen.

Of course this was her dream, she should be able to make herself invisible if she wanted to and then have the run of the house.

Hell, maybe I’ll take a swim after breakfast. I won’t even wait half an hour afterward, take that, Mom. I’m a rebel. Even if I sink to the bottom this is only a dream so when I wake up, I’ll be fine.

Yes, I’m going to be fine as soon as I can wake up and get the hell out of here…

The thought resonated more deeply than she understood, or wanted to.

She heard the sound of laughter approaching. Two females were speaking excitedly in Spanish to each other; the maids, obviously.

Why can’t I ever dream myself bilingual?

She realized that she’d have a lot of uncomfortable explaining to do, if they found her wandering around the house in her jeans and a t-shirt when everyone here dressed as if they were going to a charity gala every day of the year.

Of course when they went to the charity galas they dressed like they were going to the Academy Awards, because they couldn’t let anyone think that they’d given all their money away and didn’t have any left to buy jewelry and furs.

She dove behind the nearest potted palm tree, realizing only afterward that by expecting its trunk to obscure her that she was seriously underestimating the degree of her curves.

It was only when both women walked straight past the tree and her overriding, inconcealable cleavage that Annabeth realized that they had missed her completely.

Not believing that their conversation could have been that completely entrancing that they’d have missed the sight of her as she was sure she currently looked, she decided that this was her dream and there was no way in hell that a couple of nonexistent, figment of her imagination women were going to make her doubt her very existence in her own mind by having the nerve to ignore her in her own dream.

She decided that, with all the traffic Druid brought through the residential floors, that she could definitely come up with a plausible reason for being there… Or maybe something better…

She stepped out from behind the palm tree and hurried a few steps ahead of the meandering pair.

Annabeth could only stare there wide eyed and jaw hanging down as they walked right past her, one on either side of her, as if she wasn’t even there.

“What the friggin…” she said with marked irritation. They couldn’t be that blind could they? “Hey, um, ladies?” She called after them. She reached out and attempted to tap one of them on the shoulder but they seemed just a little too far out of her reach.

“Excuse me,” she said with forced politeness. “I am here to interview Mr. Frost for the…Falls…um, the…Devastation Daily and I think I took a wrong turn. Can you direct me to the solarium?”

Still, they ignored her.

”Please?” She added, so impatiently and with such a degree of aggravation in her tone that no one, including herself, could possibly have believed that the last word was meant sincerely.

At last the housekeepers said ‘adios’ to each other and parted company at the end of the corridor, headed for rooms on opposite sides to clean next.

“What the bloody hell.” Annabeth grumbled. “Well, at least Druid doesn’t seem to have anything to worry about when it comes to people finding me between here and the kitchen.” She spun in a complete circle slowly and realized that she really did have no idea how to get to the kitchen let alone the Solarium where breakfast was always served.

“Where did we put the Solarium, Benjamin?” She wondered aloud. “I know we put everything in the most ridiculous location possible. So it has to be…” she thought a long moment, but her memory didn’t seem to be cooperating with her much today when it came to recalling details. “Well, maybe the reason I can’t remember is that we never actually specified a location.”

Her stomach growled, mocking her ineptitude, she believed and it only served to further frustrate her. “Damn it, well you know what? We may have specified, but I call for a rewrite on account of the fact I’m starving to death. We’ll clean it up in editing. Those of us who are about to go off script salute you.” She raised two fingers to her forehead and snapped the gesture. “I hope we wrote in that they have scones at breakfast. I think I’d about kill for a scone right now. Or a piece of Sally Lund bread…”

She put her hands on her hips and tried to decide which door led to the solarium. She took three steps forward and opened the first door she reached.

She gasped as stood at the top of a vast and winding spiral staircase. The view was simply spectacular.

“Oh, Benjamin.” She whispered under her breath. “You must’ve written this part.”

--

“The Grand Solarium,” Benjamin announced, “Should be a key location, don’t you think Annabeth?”

He listened to the endless beeping of her heart monitor, marveling at the fact that he hardly even noticed it anymore unless he specifically listened for it. Unless, that was, it sped up or slowed down in even the slightest of increments. If that happened, the rest of the world immediately faded into nothing and his own heart deviated from its normal rhythm until he was certain that she was all right.

“You always said to me,” he remembered wistfully, “that if you were rich you’d eat breakfast every morning in a Solarium and have a butler called Jennings. I asked you, I remember,” he laughed softly though it was the last thing in the world he really felt like doing. “I asked you, ‘what if you find the best butler in the world and his name isn’t Jennings?' Do you remember what you said to me?”

His eyes burned as once again, another small wish went unanswered as moments passed and she did not respond. He leaned forward, unable to prevent himself from moving closer to her. He quickly discovered that he’d forgotten his pen and notebook and caught them before they slid from his lap onto the floor.

He shook his head at his own absentmindedness. “See what happens when I’m near you? I forget everything else exists.” He placed a gentle kiss against her brow. “Anyway, I’m forgetting the point of my story. Getting distracted again. You have a unique ability among women do you know that? You distract me, just by existing.”

He sat back down and flipped the notebook open once more. “You said that if you found the perfect butler and his name wasn’t Jennings that, quote, ‘he’d just have to change it’.” He laughed again, that small, thin laugh that was merely a shadow of what his laughter sounded like when she had been present in mind to hear it.

“The Grand Solarium of Cold with a Chance of Frost Manor should look…so.” He turned the page to a new one and began to draw a rough sketch of the space as he imagined it.

“Five stories from floor to glass ceiling. In the ground swimming pool, of course. With a waterfall, you ask? Of course. How could it not have a waterfall given the name of the town we’re in?” Ben drew squiggles in the space on his sketch that he’d designated the pool. “Lots of trees and plant life. Tons of palms, you love palms.”

He drew some stick tree trunks with fronds crowning the top like pointy, maniacal puffs of hair. He held up the notebook at a distance, pen tucked between his middle and index finger like a cigarette even though he’d never smoked in his life. “That one puts me in mind of Sideshow Bob.”

He frowned at his handiwork. “Yes, rather. Moving on…”

He wished now that he’d bought that packet of colored pencils he saw in the gift shop earlier to sketch a better rendering with. He had stopped himself only because they had a little Japanese cat cartoon character printed on them and he didn’t even want to think of the teasing he’d get from the nurses, especially the one or two who seemed to have taken a shine to him, let alone Annabeth’s mother if she should come back…

He had a feeling though, that Evelyn wasn’t going to come back and he didn’t quite know how he was going to explain that to Annabeth when she woke up.

Even though he realized she knew her mother a lot better than he did and so really shouldn’t be surprised that the woman had put in the most obligatory of appearances only before taking her first option to bail out.

It was what she really had always done when Annabeth could really have used her support; she’d vanished.

“Solarium.” He reminded himself that he really should keep talking, just as the nurses said. He found his voice growing hoarse today, no matter how much water he drank and he only prayed that he wasn’t coming down with a cold. If he did, then he wouldn’t be allowed in to see her, and that simply couldn’t happen.

He reached into his pocket for the vitamin C lozenges he’d bought and popped one into his mouth. “Continuing…” he said, tucking it into his cheek with his tongue as he tried to speak without swallowing it whole.

“You’ll just have to fill in the colors in your mind for me. You can do that can’t you, Annabeth? If anyone I’ve ever known could see Technicolor where there’s only black and white outlines of the world, it’s you.”

--